Download Athenian Wheat-Tsars: Black Sea Grain and Elite Culture

Athenian Wheat-Tsars:
Black Sea Grain and Elite Culture
Alfonso Moreno
We may begin a study of the Athenian grain supply from the Black Sea
(and the Bosporan Kingdom in particular) from the well-known passage
in Demosthenes’ speech Against Leptines (Dem. 20.29‑35), where the orator
speaks of approximately 400,000 medimnoi (equivalent to more than 13,000
metric tons) of grain (sitos) coming to Athens from Bosporos.1 At stake in
the case is the ateleia, or exemption, of Leukon, the king of Bosporos and
(simultaneously) honorary citizen of democratic Athens, from the performance of public services for his adoptive city. Demosthenes invites his
audience to reflect:
While of our other benefactors each has made himself useful to
us on one occasion, Leukon will be found on reflection to be a
perpetual benefactor, and that in a matter especially vital to our
city. For you are aware that we consume more imported corn
than any other nation. Now the corn that comes to our ports from
the Black Sea is equal to the whole amount from all other places
of export. And this is not surprising; for not only is that district
most productive of corn, but also Leukon, who controls the trade,
has granted exemption from dues to merchants conveying corn
to Athens, and he proclaims that those bound for your port shall
have priority of lading. For Leukon, enjoying exemption for himself and his children, has granted exemption to every one of you.
See what this amounts to. He exacts a toll of one-thirtieth from
exporters of corn from his country. Now from the Bosporos there
come to Athens about four hundred thousand medimnoi. (Dem.
20.30‑32, Loeb translation).
The context of the passage (not to mention its verbal syntax) make absolutely
clear that constant, per annum quantities are indicated. Moreover, according
to Demosthenes, the amounts of imported grain were verifiable from public accounts (20.32); and in a previous year of shortage, Leukon had sent an
amount of grain in addition to the usual amount (20.33). Demosthenes’ annual figure therefore cannot reasonably be dismissed on a priori grounds, as
some scholarship has done.2
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In addition, Strabo supplies evidence for the amounts exported from a
single Bosporan port, stating that Leukon sent 2,100,000 medimnoi from Theodosia to Athens (Strab. 7.4.6). This equals about 260,000 medimnoi per annum
in the eight years between the opening of the port shortly before 355 BC and
the death of Leukon in 349/8 BC.3
These figures find independent corroboration in two other sources: 1) We
find that in 340 BC the Macedonian king Philip II captured at Hieron either
180 or 230 ships bound for Athens with grain (the figures come respectively
from Theopompos and Philochoros (FGrH 115 F292 and 328 F162, respectively). Calculating from the average capacity of a merchant ship, approximately
3,000 medimnoi, we find that this convoy may well have consisted of at least
540,000 medimnoi.4 2) If Mytilene was importing more than 100,000 medimnoi
yearly from the Bosporan Kingdom c. 350 BC,5 it is perfectly credible that
Athens imported as much as Demosthenes claims.
But it is my aim in this paper to avoid crude exercises in quantification,
and instead look at a broader set of evidence that will qualify the economic
context of these mutually-corroborating and independent figures. We should
ideally seek to describe the cultural parameters within which this grain trade
operated. This requires us to pay special attention to the period from the last
third of the 5th century to the end of the 4th century BC, for which the surviving evidence is relatively abundant. For this period, Athenian relations
with the ruling house of the Spartokidai are not only especially amenable
to a cultural analysis based on archaeological and textual evidence, but also
especially relevant to a study of the Athenian grain supply. For example, the
decree of the politician Androtion honoring Spartokos and Pairisades in 346
BC (IG II2, 212), and including a relief of the kings (Fig. 1), establishes the
grain supply from Bosporos as a reciprocal relationship between Athens on
the one hand, and the Spartokid dynasty on the other.6 The ateleia and loading priority received by merchants who took grain to Athens was granted
not by Bosporan law, but through Spartokid edicts (kerugmata).7 Of course, a
powerful oligarchy shared some power at Bosporos with the Spartokidai, but
it is unmistakable that the latter held an absolute control of foreign affairs,
particularly pertaining to the grain trade.8 Demosthenes was strictly accurate
when referring to Leukon in 355 BC as kurios of Bosporan grain (Dem. 20.31).
The dozen or so rural settlements which have been excavated during the last
fifteen years on the European Bosporos, near or on the coast of the Sea of
Azov, and which appear to be large farmsteads dating from the fourth to the
mid-third centuries, have been convincingly suggested as the bases for the
intensive exploitation of Bosporan royal domains.9
Any analysis of Spartokid power must start from Bosporan epigraphy,
which portrays each Spartokid from Leukon onwards as embodying the dual
powers of an archon (towards his Greek subjects) and a basileus (towards his
barbarian subjects).10 Michael I. Rostovtzeff long ago recognized this Doppelnatur, or Zweiseitigkeit, as a unique Bosporan feature that encapsulates the
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Fig. 1. The decree of Androtion (IG II²,
212) (photo by A. Moreno).
complex influences and compromises at the core of Spartokid identity and
politics.11 But how and why was this dual system instituted? Until recently,
we could only speculate that, although Leukon (who ruled from 389/8 to
349/8 BC) is the first Bosporan archon / basileus attested, the titles might have
originated with his predecessors. However, the massive architrave of the
Ionic propylaia recently discovered at Nymphaion bears identical dedicatory
inscriptions, in which Leukon appears as “archon of Bosporos and Theodosia and of all Sindike, and of the Toretoi and Dandarioi and Psessoi”.12 In
representing Spartokid power as an archonship over both Greeks and nonGreeks, this text suggests that it was later, during Leukon’s forty-year reign,
that the title basileus was introduced, and thus (at least at this formal level)
that the Bosporan state began its transformation into a kingdom.13 However,
we must remember that titles are only manifestations of deeper realities:
Spartokid kingship had to develop conceptually before it could be expressed
as a name. The Nymphaion inscription only shows that it was not the initial
(nor, for that matter, an automatic) choice. As a terminus post quem it presents
us with the problem of explaining how the institution of kingship began at
Bosporos, probably during (and certainly not long before) the first quarter of
the 4th century BC.
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Fig. 2. The dromos of the Tsar’s
Kurgan near Kerch (photo by A.
Moreno).
Michael I. Rostovtzeff reflects common opinion in thinking that the Spartokidai simply took over the types of government customary for each part of
their subjects, civic magistracy for Greeks, kingship for barbarians.14 This at
first seems highly plausible, especially in the context of political maneuvers
like the marriage alliance between Satyros (who ruled from 433/2 to 389/8
BC) and Hekataios, the king of the Sindoi.15 In this hypothesis, kingship was
transferred to the Spartokidai from their various non-Greek subjects, in a process that, in light of the new inscription, would have gradually culminated
with Leukon’s transformation from archon to basileus.
However, archaeological evidence from aristocratic burials in the northern Black Sea region casts doubt on this idea. After the first quarter of the
4th century BC, we find that distinctive and well-studied typologies of local
burial, like the Sindo-Maiotian brick and wood graves, come to an abrupt
end, to be replaced by the stone-chambered kurgans typical of 4th century
Pantikapaion.16 The custom and technique of burial in stone-chambered kurgans not only around Gorgippia, but also across the Sea of Azov in the region
of the Lower Don, almost certainly emanated from Pantikapaion, and can
be traced to the architects who worked there and created a hybrid form of
burial, a Scythian mound re-designed according to the possibilities of Greek
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monumental architecture (Fig. 2).17 This observation alone forces us to look
more closely at the possibility that Spartokid kingship was itself an inspired
hybrid of Scythian and Greek ideas of royalty.
The origin of these ideas is to be viewed in the context of direct Atheno-Bosporan interaction. Our sources allow us to trace this back no further than the
end of the Peloponnesian War, when Satyros successfully seized Nymphaion
from Athenian control (Aeschin. 3.171‑172).18 Instead of treachery by Gylon,
the Athenian in control of the place (and grandfather of the politician Demosthenes), the likeliest cause of Nymphaion’s loss is simply that Athens at this
time could no longer hold the place. Nor would it have wished to, for there
would have been little sense in fighting a faraway strongman who, if appeased,
could instead promise reliable friendship and supplies, including grain, to a
city whose Aegean Empire was in clear and present danger of collapsing.19
From his fort at Dekeleia, the Spartan king Agis could observe the results
of this policy of appeasement: “ships carrying grain that were constantly
sailing into Peiraieus”, but which could be cut off at Kalchedon and Byzantion (Xen. Hell. 1.1.35, Penguin translation, is the earliest direct reference to
Athenian imports of grain from the Black Sea). In taking Nymphaion, Satyros
had only to observe the contemporary needs and capabilities of Athens. The
praise later publicly lavished on him by the grateful Athenians (Isoc. 17; IG
II2, 212) shows the true nature of Gylon’s so-called betrayal: it was more like
a personal exchange of gifts marking the creation of elite xeniai. We hear that
Gylon himself received from Satyros a Scythian princess as his bride, and was
given Kepoi, on the Taman peninsula, as a place to retire. When the Athenian
defeat at Aigospotamoi interrupted supplies, Satyros continued his personal
generosities by providing refuge for dislocated Athenian aristocrats, like the
Mantitheos who in the late 390’s BC cites Satyros as his alibi during the rule
of the Thirty (Lys. 16.4), as well as for high-ranking pro-Athenian partisans,
like the Byzantine associates of Alkibiades (Xen. Hell. 2.2.1).
Athenian elite movements to Bosporan safe harbors were paralleled by
Bosporan movements to Athens: in the 390’s BC, the Bosporan noble Sopaios
gave his son money and two grain ships and sent him off on a voyage de formation. The trip was both educational and commercial in nature, as the young
man says: “my father loaded two ships with grain, gave me money, and sent
me off on a trading expedition and at the same time to see the world” (Isoc.
17.4, Loeb translation). Significantly, the son went directly to the school of
Isokrates and began to move rapidly in Athenian elite circles. The influential
politician Agyrrhios of Kollytos (now much better known as the proponent
of the Athenian Grain-Tax Law of 374/3 BC) appears as a witness in the lawsuit against the Bosporan’s former friend, the powerful banker Pasion (Isoc.
17.31‑32).20
Voyages like that of the son of Sopaios seem to have become frequent
during the rule of Leukon, and by the 350’s BC Isokrates could refer to a series of his other, no doubt similarly aristocratic, students from Pontos (Isoc.
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15.224), who were educated in his school side by side with men like the politician Androtion, the general Timotheos, and the historian Ephoros. Many
of these leading Athenians established intensely personal, hereditary connections with the Spartokidai. Just as it was Gylon’s grandson Demosthenes
who defended Leukon’s ateleia in 355 BC, and, according to Dinarchos (Din.
1.43), set up public statutes of the Spartokidai in exchange for personal, yearly
gifts of grain; it was Isokrates’ pupil Androtion who moved honors for Leukon’s sons in 346 BC (IG II2, 212); and it was Agyrrhios’ great-grandson, also
named Agyrrhios, who did the same for Spartokos III in 285/4 (IG II2, 653).21
Among Isokrates’ students, Timotheos pursued an active policy of Athenian
expansion and control in the Hellespont (as Isokrates boasted: Isoc. 15.112),
and Ephoros started, as we shall see, an entire tradition of historiography on
Scythia. This important Atheno-Bosporan elite network was forged during
the rule of Satyros and Leukon.
If we now inquire about the intellectual pursuits and aesthetic tastes of
this group, we find 4th century Athenian paideia as the principal source for
the ideology of Bosporan kingship. Here the visual medium serves an evidentiary role parallel to that of public rhetoric, letting us see how its propagators and consumers wished to represent themselves. The objects relevant
to this analysis consist of luxury manufactures of gold, electrum, and silver
from the 4th century kurgans of Bosporos and Scythia, mostly made by Greek
craftsmen who themselves lived, or worked, in the Black Sea poleis, especially
Pantikapaion.22 These masterpieces reveal a first-hand understanding not only
of Scythian objects and shapes, but also of the aesthetic principles of ScythoSiberian art and their translational potential into Greek terms.23 Crucially,
they were created under the immediate demand and according to the tastes
of their consumers, and at Pantikapaion the nearest and most influential of
these clients were obviously not Scythians from the steppe, but members of
a traveled and urbanized Bosporan aristocracy.
It is therefore remarkable that so many scholars, including Rostovtzeff,
have described samples of this art as ethnologically realistic “illustrations to
Herodotos”, or as “precious documents for reconstructing the life and religion of the Scythians”.24 Indeed it would be highly surprising if the Bosporan
aristocrats who commissioned this art had much desire for scientific accuracy,
or if the craftsmen of Pantikapaion went to any lengths to understand and
realistically depict things like the lore of the Great Goddess, the ceremonies
of holy communion, or other intricacies so appealing to modern scholarship.
Instead, we must place these objects in their appropriate cultural context,
remembering that they were made for the same class of Bosporans present
in Athens in the circle of Isokrates. Taste matches education, as we see when
we juxtapose the iconography of these objects with the views expressed by a
member of this circle, Ephoros of Kyme (as preserved by Strabon):25
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Ephoros, in the fourth book of his History, the book entitled
Europe (for he made the circuit of Europe as far as the Scythians),
says towards the end that the modes of life both of the Sauromatai
and of the other Scythians are unlike, for, whereas some are so
cruel that they even eat human beings, others abstain from eating
any living creature whatever. Now the other writers, he says, tell
only about their savagery, because they know that the terrible
and the marvelous are startling, but one should tell the opposite
facts too and make them patterns of conduct (paradeigmata), and
he himself, therefore, will tell only about those who follow “most
just” habits, for there are some of the Scythian nomads who
feed only on mare’s milk, and excel all men in justice; and they
are mentioned by the poets: by Homer, when he says that Zeus
espies the land “of the Galaktophagoi and Abioi, men most just”,
and by Hesiod, in what is called his Circuit of the Earth, when he
says that Phineos is carried by the Storm Winds “to the land of
the Galaktophagoi, who have their dwellings in wagons”. Then
Ephoros reasons out the cause as follows: since they are frugal
in their ways of living and not money-getters, they not only are
orderly towards one another, because they have all things in common, their wives, children, the whole of their kin and everything,
but also remain invincible and unconquered by outsiders, because
they have nothing to be enslaved for. And he cites Choerilos
also, who, in his The Crossing of the Pontoon-Bridge which was
constructed by Darios, says, “the sheep-tending Sakai, of Scythian
stock; but they used to live in wheat-producing Asia; however,
they were colonists from the Nomads, law-abiding people”. And
when he calls Anakharsis “wise”, Ephoros says that he belongs
to this race, and that he was considered also one of Seven Wise
Men because of his perfect self-control and good sense. And he
goes on to tell the inventions of Anacharsis: the bellows, the twofluked anchor and the potter’s wheel. These things I tell knowing full well that Ephoros himself does not tell the whole truth
about everything; and particularly in his account of Anacharsis
(for how could the wheel be his invention, if Homer, who lived
in earlier times, knew of it? “As when a potter has wheel that fits
in his hands”, [Hom. Il. 18.600] and so on); but as for those other
things, I tell them because I wish to make my point clear that
there actually was a common report, which was believed by the
men of both early and of later times, that a part of the nomads,
I mean those who had settled the farthest away from the rest of
mankind, were “Galaktophagoi”, “Abioi”, and “most just”, and
that they were not an invention of Homer. (Ephoros, ap. Strab.
7.3.9 = FGrH 70 F42, Loeb translation).
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If we look at the 4th century luxury metalwork surviving from Bosporos to
the Dnieper, it is plain to see in them the Scythians of Homer and Ephoros: the
justest and wisest, drinkers of mare’s milk, frugal, nomadic, wagon-dwelling,
strangers to money-making, communists, invincible warriors, lords of wheat
and livestock, the people of Anacharsis. But this is Homer rather than Herodotos, poetry and art instead of ethnography, the fantasies of 4th century Athenian rhetoricians instead of a historia of the steppe. Here, therefore, we have
the palpable evidence of the enormous intellectual influence that aristocratic
Athens – and in particular a closed circle of men with conspicuous connections to the city’s grain supply – had on the identity and self-representation
of the Bosporan elite.
Rostovtzeff, carefully reading this passage of Ephoros, recognized it as
a fantasy typical of the Isokratean school: “Ganz augenscheinlich ist auch,
abgesehen von dem Inhalt, daß eine von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus verfaßte Beschreibung keine wirkliche, sondern nur eine künstliche sein muß…
Die Skythen des Ephoros sind dementsprechend nichts Reales. Sie sind ein
rhetorisches, moralisierendes paradeigma im Sinne des Isokrates, dessen treuer
Schüler Ephoros war”.26
But, in studying the iconography, Rostovtzeff indulged in an unfortunate
inconsistency:
The scenes of social life are slightly idealized, the types also.
Here we can trace the Stoic tendency of Ephoros, who desired to
substitute, for the real Scythians, Scythians idealized according to
Stoic theory. But the idealization does not go very far. One can see
that the Scythians themselves, under Greek influence, wished the
Greek artists to provide them with objects reproducing Scythian
scenes: scenes from their religious, from their economic and social
life. Precious documents for reconstructing the life and religion
of the Scythians…27
However, Rostovtzeff must be credited for the enormously valuable task of
tracing the commanding influence of the Ephoran Scythian on the literary
traditions of antiquity, from the 4th century BC to the age of Strabo and Lucian. These works provide enough quotations to set almost as captions for the
surviving 4th century metalwork. The Stoics, for example, liked to see their
wise Anacharsis as the antithesis not only of sea travel and trade (ironically,
since it was probably his fabled voyage (Hdt. 4.76‑77) that inspired the 4th
century voyages de formation of the son of Sopaios and others), but also of the
gymnasium, music, wine, and pleasure (see Lucian, Anach.; Hercher, Epistolog. Graec. 102‑105). In the same way, the depictions on Black Sea metalwork
strikingly lack any trace of pleasurable engagements: we are a world away
from the Herodotean Scythians inhaling cannabis and “delighted, shouting
for joy” (Hdt. 4.75).28
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Fig. 3. Silver gilt vessel from Solocha. Courtesy of the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.
On the other hand, the iconography of the silver gilt vessel from Solocha
(Fig. 3) and on the pectoral from Tolstaja Mogila (Fig. 4) strikingly match the
boast of the Ephoran, communist Anacharsis: “We hold all our land in common. We take whatever it gives us willingly, and let go whatever it hides. We
save our cattle from savage beasts, and receive milk and cheese in return”
(Hercher, Epistolog. Graec. 104‑105).29
The contention of Lucian’s Toxaris that “Scythians think that there is nothing greater than friendship” (Lucian, Tox. 7), backed by his five different adventure vignettes of Scythian friendship, closely matches the iconography on
the electrum vase from Kul’-Oba (Fig. 5).30 The same exercise of comparison
can be continued indefinitely.
Strabo gives us only hints of the well-deserved thrashing that these moralizing paradeigmata of Scythia later received at the hands of Eratosthenes of
Kyrene and Apollodoros of Athens.31 He himself thought that Homer, and
after him Aischylos, had been right to praise people who abstained “from
living a life of contracts and money-making” and, Platonikôs (an illuminating adverbial choice!), possessed everything in common, except sword and
drinking-cup. In doing this, Strabo reveals both the gamut of elite prejudices
carried by the students of Isokrates as they manufactured their ideal Scythians, as well as how sharply these ideas contrasted with reality:
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Fig. 4. Pectoral from Tolstaja Mogila. Courtesy of the Museum of Historical Treasures of
Ukraine, Kiev.
And yet our mode of life has spread its change for the worse to
almost all peoples, introducing amongst them luxury and sensual pleasures and, to satisfy these vices, base artifices that lead
to innumerable acts of greed. So then, much wickedness of this
sort has fallen on the barbarian peoples also, on the nomads as
well as the rest; for as the result of taking up a seafaring life they
not only have become morally worse, indulging in the practice
of piracy and of slaying strangers, but also, because of their intercourse with many peoples, have partaken of the luxury and the
peddling habits of those peoples. But though these things seem
to conduce strongly to gentleness of manner, they corrupt morals
and introduce cunning instead of the straightforwardness which
I just now mentioned. (Strab. 7.3.7, Loeb translation).
One wonders how much the Scythian elite itself, avid consumer of Bosporan
art that its kurgan inventories show it to have been, did not wish to re-invent
itself according to the Ephoran model, and in doing so became an example of
life imitating art. This is, in fact, what the Bosporan aristocracy seems to have
done increasingly. We know of Satyros II leading his troops in “the Scythian
custom” in 310 BC (Diod. 20.22.3). A similar detail is attached to his brother
Eumelos (except that here it is death that imitates art):
As he was returning home from Sindike and was hurrying for
a sacrifice, riding to his palace in a four-horse carriage which
had four wheels and a canopy, it happened that the horses were
frightened and ran away with him. Since the driver was unable
to manage the reins, the king, fearing lest he be carried to the
ravines, tried to jump out; but his sword caught in the wheel, and
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he was dragged along by the motion of the carriage and died on
the spot. (Diod. 20.25.4, Loeb translation).
And, of course, the ultimate example of art in death: the reinvention of the
Scythian kurgan, and its combination, as Ephoros would have done for his
“justest and wisest” Scythians, with the heroa and corbelled tombs of Homeric
princes (Fig. 2).32
Fig. 5. Electrum vessel from Kul’ Oba. Courtesy of the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.
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Fig. 6. Comb from Solocha. Courtesy of the State Hermitage, St Petersburg.
Transforming a state by educating its leaders, the paideia of Isokrates triumphed in Bosporos. This monarchic rule of the Spartokidai would, in Isocrates’ view, have assimilated them to the gods themselves:
The Carthaginians and the Lakedaimonians, who are the best
governed peoples of the world, are ruled by oligarchies at home,
yet, when they take the field, they are ruled by kings… And, if
there is need to speak also of things old in story, it is said that
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even the gods are ruled by Zeus as king. (Isoc. 3.24‑26, Loeb
translation).
Even better, every Bosporan aristocrat had access to the ennobling “history”
of a Homeric Scythia and its paradeigmata, and could in turn become, like
Isokrates’ ideal monarch, a paradeigma for common people.33 In the words of
Isokrates, writing as the Cyprian king Nikokles:
I was not, of course, unaware that those kings also are highly
thought of by the multitude who are just in their dealings
with their citizens, even though they provide themselves with
pleasures from outside their households; but I desired both to
put myself as far above such suspicions as possible and at the
same time to set up my conduct as a pattern (paradeigma) to my
people, knowing that the multitude are likely to spend their lives
in practices in which they see their rulers occupied. (Isoc. 3.37,
Loeb translation).
The same yearning to recover the moral paradeigmata of history drove the
student of Isokrates, whether he was a Bosporan commissioning work from
a Pantikapaian artist, or an Androtion writing his Atthis, to look back to the
traditions of his ancestors, whether more or less imagined or studied: “for
if you are mindful of the past you will plan better for the future” (Isoc. 3.35,
Loeb translation).34 And on Androtion’s decree displayed in Peiraieus, the
sons of Leukon, each looking the part of a wise Anacharsis, “the justest of
men”, kings of Bosporos, were paradeigmata themselves, great benefactors,
Isokratean “models for others to copy” (Fig. 1).35
One of the great ironies of the ideology of Bosporan kingship is that it
developed in Athens, alongside and within an ideology that was democratic,
or at least professed to be so; another is that it developed a moralizing, philosophic myth of aristocratic detachment from money-making and applied it
to the very class of men who organized and controlled an overseas trading
empire. Equally ironic is how those who idealized Scythia were, on the one
hand, living contradictions of democratic ideals, yet could present themselves in Athens as democratic benefactors (with their official title as basileis
punctiliously excluded, though clearly implied, as in IG II2, 212). It did not
matter either that Plato could use the same Scythian paradeigma that appears
on the Solocha comb (Fig. 6) to disprove the democratic tenet (a topos of the
Athenian funeral oration)36 that courage was the monopoly of hoplites (Pl.
Lach. 191a-191c). Nor was there inconsistency (or sincere populism) involved
when the “democratic” sons of Leukon were praised by the son of one of the
four hundred men who had overthrown the Athenian democracy in 411 BC.
Athenian rhetoric produced the brilliant sleights of hand that made these little
contradictions disappear, replacing them with pleasing fictions: the transfor-
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mation of kings and oligarchs into democrats, and of economic profit into the
antithesis of the aristocratic ethos.
Conclusion
I would like to end with the provocative suggestion that the most important
factor enabling Athenian grain imports from the Black Sea was the transformation, in the early 4th century BC, of a local tyranny at Pantikapaion into a
powerful Graeco-Scythian monarchy. That transformation took place in the
context of a specific intellectual and social nexus comprising a Bosporan and
Athenian elite. These men were instrumental in the process of ideologizing,
and thus of perpetuating, a royal economy that could generate large and
stable surpluses of grain, and thus supply large quantities annually to Athens.
Two things only were needed to ensure the permanence of this system: the
good-will of the Bosporan kings, and Athenian control of the route between
Pantikapaion and Peiraieus. As long as Athenian political leadership could
provide this, Athens would be fed and a few of its politicians gain enormous
power. If correct, we may have here a very different way of understanding this
trade: an oligarchic grain supply sustaining a professedly democratic state.
Notes
1 The key to converting a medimnos of wheat or barley into its approximate modern
weight equivalent appears in lines 21‑25 of Agora I 7557 (see Rhodes & Osborne
(eds.) 2003 26): “The buyer will weigh out the wheat at a weight of a talent for
five hekteis, and the barley at a weight of a talent per medimnos”. Thus: 1 medimnos
of wheat = 32.96 kg; 1 medimnos of barley = 27.47 kg. Before this discovery, the
weight of ancient grains was normally simply taken as roughly equivalent to
modern varieties, which now turn out to be considerably (c. 30 %) heavier (e.g.
1 medimnos of modern wheat and barley at 40.54 kg and 33.77 kg, respectively).
The nutritional value of the medimnos is thus significantly less than previously
thought.
2 I refer in particular to Garnsey 1988, 97, in his influential and minimalist attempt
to downplay the scale of Athenian grain imports. Garnsey approvingly quotes
Gomme’s reckless supposition that “Demosthenes was a politician, and so was
probably not speaking the truth” (in Gomme 1933a, 32). Cf. Braund in this volume.
3 Demosthenes speaks in 355 BC as if the facilities at Theodosia have only recently
been opened (Dem. 20.33). Kocevalov 1932, 321‑323, first made this division of
Strabon’s figure, but he gets 420,000‑350,000 medimnoi per year, taking 355/4‑349/8
as the end-points.
4 See Casson 1971, 183‑199 on ship capacities.
5 Tod, GHI II, 163.
6 Rostovtzeff 1993, 73.
7 Rostovtzeff 1993, 73. On these kerugmata, see Braund 2003, 204‑205.
8 Burstein 1993, 83, contrasts the evidence from Isokrates with that from Demosthenes
and the decree of Androtion to argue that “a major reorganization of the Bosporan
grain trade… must have occurred sometime between the late 390’s and 355 BC…”,
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Athenian Wheat-Tsars
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
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its principal feature being the centralization of control into Spartokid hands at
the expense of other Bosporan aristocrats. He points specifically to the conclusion of Isokrates’ speech (17.57), where Sopaios appears to have a capacity equal
to that of Satyros to grant favors to Athens, including export rights. This would
follow the general trend outlined in this paper, but the relative importance of
Bosporan aristocrats in relations with Athens throughout the fourth century is
unmistakable (e.g. in the notable position of Sosis and Theodosios in IG II2, 212),
and probably more stable than Burstein assumes.
See Maslennikov 1998, 42‑72.
See W. Dittenberger’s note in Syll.3 211: “Graecorum archontes, barbarorum reges
passim vocabantur Spartocidae saeculo quarto”. The earliest instances are: CIRB 6 (=
Syll.3, 211), 7 (much restored), 8, 1037, and 1038.
Rostovtzeff 1993, 70‑71.
Sokolova 2001, 369 (the preliminary announcement of the find). The editio princeps
of this text has not yet appeared, nor have I been able to see the actual stone,
but the published photograph allows the reading. I am deeply thankful to Dr.
Sokolova for showing me other photographs of the text and discussing it with
me on various occasions in Crimea and in St. Petersburg.
A similar (albeit much restored) text on a long-known altar might illustrate the
introduction of kingship at a stage following that of the Nymphaion inscription,
since it shows Leukon as archon of the Sindoi and basileus over Toretoi, Dandarioi
and Psessoi: CIRB 6a (Škorpil’s restoration, see Sokolova 2001, 371).
Rostovtzeff 1993, 79.
See Polyainos, Strat. 8.55. On the identification of this Satyros as Satyros I (as
opposed to his four later Spartocid namesakes), and the overall historicity of this
story, see Rostovtzeff 1993, 118‑120.
Alekseeva 1999, 330; Vinogradov 2001, 85‑87.
Rostovtzeff 1922, 76‑79; Minns 1913, 194. There has never been serious doubt
that Greek architects created the full typology of stone-chambered kurgans
of Bosporos, which also appears simultaneously and abundantly in Thrace. A
comparison of the typically Greek rusticated masonry from the Tsarskii Kurgan,
with that from contemporary Bosporan monumental buildings makes this fact
quite obvious, and the stones of a kurgan in Sveshtari, Thrace, still bear the
Greek numeral signs that aided workmen in the assembly of the building: see
Tsetskhladze 1998b, 53.
This does not overlook the most discussed literary source for Athenian presence
in the Black Sea in the fifth century, namely the famous expedition of Perikles
to Sinope (Plut. Per. 20.1‑2), usually dated to the early 430’s. The passage from
Plutarch has received countless interpretations, from scholars who have Perikles
continue to the north coast and secure a source of grain for Athens, to others
who go as far as to deny the historicity of whole account (see Tsetskhladze, who
is among the more skeptical scholars, for a full reference to the debate: 1997a,
461‑466). I simply accept the account as it stands, not only because Plutarch
and his source obviously had reasons to avoid linking the expedition with the
north coast (a temptation they, too, would surely have felt), but also because
the reported results of the mission match the well-attested Athenian policies of
establishing cleruchies and controlling maritime routes. See Hind 1994a, 492,
setting the date of Nymphaion’s seizure as ca. 405 BC.
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Alfonso Moreno
19 Braund 2003, 198‑202, is helpful in presenting other arguments against straightforward readings of Gylon’s “treachery”.
20 On Agyrrhios and the Grain-Tax Law, see Stroud 1998 with Moreno 2003.
21 See Davies 1971, 279‑281 and Traill 1994, 125‑126.
22 Boardman 1994, 196‑210; Rostovtzeff 1993, 86; Vinogradov, in Rostovtzeff 1993,
142; Treister 1999a, 79 (see also 1999b, 117‑121, for sculptors); Gajdukevič 1971,
132.
23 Boardman 1994, 196‑210.
24 Rostovtzeff 1922, 104‑112. See also Rostovtzeff 1993, 38‑39, 86; Jacobson 1995,
52‑64; Rolle 1989, 54‑131; Raevskii, in Rostovtzeff 1993, 61, n. 31 has references
to the wide range of recent studies on this art as representing actual Scythian
customs, cult, etc.
25 Barber 1935, 12, dates the composition of the fourth book of Ephoros’ History to
ca. 356.
26 Rostovtzeff 1931, 81‑82.
27 Rostovtzeff 1922, 104.
28 Rostovtzeff 1993, 87.
29 See Rostovtzeff 1993, 87.
30 See Jaeger 1945, 96: “Like Theognis in his plan for rearing the young nobleman,
Isokrates attaches the greatest importance to the right kind of friendships”.
31 Rostovtzeff 1993, 87.
32 On the study and re-use of Mycenaean tombs for heroic cult in the Classical
period, see Boardman 2002, 52‑67. Compare Minns 1913, 194, with Rostovtzeff
1922, 78.
33 Jaeger 1945, 100: “He makes the ideal monarch the representative of his people’s
culture, the visible embodiment of the character of his state”.
34 See Jaeger 1945, 118.
35 See Jaeger 1945, 100.
36 See Loraux 1986, 212.
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